Service Electric Cablevision/Service Electric Cable TV Discussion

Jed1 · 2025-01-18T18:38:30+00:00

Hi, I'm picking up where we left off at DSL Reports. This thread is for anything Service Electric related. I even added the other division so this thread will cover all the Service Electric divisions. SECV is Hazleton, Sunbury, and Birdsboro and SECTV is Allentown, Wilkes Barre, and Phillipsburg NJ. Hopefully everybody from the old site will find their way here.

bsocko

cypherstream

My friend in Kulpmont was just talking with me about the the direct SFP “Hack” I will report back if he decides to try it

cypherstream

There’s 4 trucks from Williams Cable TV service or whatever it said down on my street working on the fiber coils.

bsocko

When did this happen?!

Apparently Comcast has installed a fiber pon network in Bloomsburg and is already connecting customers?!

SECV HFC and Fiber
Jlink Fiber
FastBridge Fiber
Empire Access Fiber
Comcast Fiber

What is the world is attracting all these providers to Bloomsburg? This is insanity!

https://seekingalpha.com/pr/20488461-high-speed-reliable-internet-from-xfinity-now-available-in-bloomsburg-pennsylvania

bsocko

cypherstream

bsocko the college? School system? Yeah that’s a lot.

Empire is coming to the Lehigh valley. Comcast is constantly building, I think they want every address in their home state of PA some day. Not sure the cutoff between docsis and PON, somewhere around 2024. You HAVE to use Comcast’s EPON gateway with their service. Fastbridge has a handoff device (Calix I think), or their WiFi gateway. I don’t know anything about the other two.

I was thinking of getting the T-Mobile backup for $20/m with autopay but honestly I shouldn’t have to. I’m hoping when the fiber is lit here it’s stable and there’s been a lot of learning lessons from the past outages.

cypherstream

Splicers are in my neighborhood today.

cypherstream

According to my camera, spicers were there for 6 hours yesterday. Guy is back today. Cable into van on one side of the road and hes down in a flush mount fiber vault on the other side of the road as I drove by.

cypherstream

On the current bill for a site I approve regarding video.

May 2026 rate adjustments
Classic Cable increases $3.00/mo.
Broadcast Retransmission Fee increases by $4.10/mo.
Regional Sports Fee increases by $1.07/mo.
Copyright Fee decreases by $0.04/mo.

The bill itself doesn’t break those fees down. It just shows Classic cable at 78.95 with each Converter / DTA as $5.95 additional and an FCC “All-In” TV Price of $84.90 which is just one converter plus the classic cable line item.

So if those fees are built in to the “Classic Cable” line item, then technically that package costs less.

But next month looking at $87.08 I guess for “Classic Cable” instead of $78.95 ($8.13 more). Then the FCC “All-In” price would add one converter to that and show as $93.03.

zeroskatr512

I don’t recall this being officially discussed but a new fiber rate card was pushed in the last month. A little bit of shuffling around. New 150M tier. 250M bumped to 350M, 500M bumped to 650M, 1G no change, 2G price cut, 5G no change, 8G price cut. [https://www.secv.com/cdocs/secv_ftth_rates.pdf](https://)

cypherstream

zeroskatr512 oh wow, and they also updated docsis too.

Interesting the battery backup purchase for docsis is $99.95 but the line item for fiber is $499.95 and listed as “Optional 24 Hour ONT/ATA Battery Backup Purchase ”.

I already have a 2 RU APC.

Promo pricing (1 year - though I’ve had it extended for asking nicely before)
Docsis and fiber (upload is just symmetrical on the fiber)
150/25 $27.96
350/35 $39.96
650/65 $55.96
1000/100 $71.96
2000/200 $87.96

Fiber only:
5000/5000 $103.96
8000/8000 $119.96

bsocko

They are really feeling the heat everywhere with all this overbuilding.

I feel like if they are not proactive as the incumbent they will be left behind.

Every time they have these frequent fiber outages they lose more and more of their customers that will never come back now that many have options. I would love to see the uptake vs churn for fiber in Bloomsburg.

They really need to get an engineering team that isn’t reactive every time they have an outage and figure out the root cause of all these issues. You don’t hear about all the over builders having these issues.

Then again it took them 2 years to fix my CM9200 upstream problem. They replaced the node, head end lasers, adjusted laser power. At the end of the day it was a firmware update of the modem that fixed the issues.

cypherstream

bsocko Yeah I don’t know what the heck is going on. They have a good system design. Standard hardware. Maybe its all software related, like provisioning systems and firmware, etc. It SHOULDN’T be unreliable.

I haven’t heard much since that week long outage in early April. I should be able to upgrade soon, maybe in the next 30 days or so.

bsocko

Can you guys resolve this link on secv?
It will not load while connected to ptd but loads immediately when I go to cellular?

https://archive.triblive.com/local/judge-rules-against-crackd-egg-restaurant-theyve-largely-chosen-their-fate-here/

cypherstream

bsocko loads fine here.

cypherstream

Confirmed no fiber outages since that week long stint a few weeks back. I think engineering got a lot of lessons learned from that event.

Fiber to the ONT will be a green SC APC connector over single mode fiber. I have one run from my demarc to my utility room ready for easy connect.

cypherstream

There’s an army of splice trucks and bucket trucks in my development today. Lot of pedestal lids are off. Lots of fiber coiled up in some. Maybe 5, 6 or more trucks in the development. Big day for progress and they usually work till 7PM. I drove around a bit and didn’t see any other large coils hanging out of ped’s with an orange cone by them except for down where they are actively worming.

I figured they would be out today because the lid was off one yesterday and I’ve seen them take a day to “examine” things then do the real splice and cleanup the next day.

Williams Technology was on the side of one truck. The others just said contracted by service electric. Major operation today.

SeattleMatt73

Checked in with my Sunbury contact to get a status on the Fiber build for my Mom. They did about 60% of her road, then stopped last year.

Well, not good news. They’ve suspended all fiber builds in Sunbury (and the outlying areas) and “may” start after the end of Summer.

I wasn’t going to ask “why”, but my gut is telling me $$$$

xpxp2002

SeattleMatt73 Might be fiber availability. I’ve been reading a lot about smaller providers struggling to get any orders fulfilled this year due to supply constraints.

cypherstream

SeattleMatt73 they had a shortage on parts and more just came into Birdsboro, but I suspect they are competing with AI, other builds and pressure from big carrier orders (AT&T).

Also north Berks / Lehigh county line (Fleetwood through Kutztown, Topton, Mertztown, etc) is likely going to be dead last, which is unfortunate since that’s some of the oldest cable plant they have that requires the most maintenance. Likely 2027+

SeattleMatt73

cypherstream Thank ya both! Definitely valid reasons if true!

cypherstream

SeattleMatt73 Yup. Talked to an employee I went to school with. Some kind of parts shortage. I almost think splice cases or splicing materials. We have lots of fiber terminals run already in our township. But by the nodes there’s just huge spools of cable. They would put in a new splice case there, slap their logo on it and a alphanumeric code. They feed the fiber terminals from that. Going into the new case is a new feed from the existing fiber splice case that is by the HFC Node.

There must be enough spares they can allocate by the node. As far as I know the system isn’t fed from the node itself like Comcast or Cox have done. Its fed right from the Nokia chassis in the closest headend or hub.

They are building a new hub in spring township to expand out that way. They are going to pull a Comcast and build into a new area. They already have adjacent markets in parts of Cumru and Mohnton and down to Morgantown.

According to county tax records, they purchased 3333 Penn Ave for $900,000 on 5/30/2024. It was some kind of auto garage or something that they tore down and put a fence up. That will be the hub serving the new build.

The existing hubs are at
6400 Perkiomen Ave Birdsboro PA (Main Headend) - I am served from this one (brd designation in traceroutes)
https://www.google.com/maps/place/6400+Perkiomen+Ave,+Birdsboro,+PA+19508/@40.2895812,-75.8282148,713m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x89c67b994c05d77b:0x891de40456959ec8!8m2!3d40.2895771!4d-75.8256345!16s%2Fg%2F11c238lr9y?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUwNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

4216 Main St Elverson PA (tvh designaion in traceroutes Twin Valley)
https://www.google.com/maps/place/4216+Main+St,+Elverson,+PA+19520/@40.1565928,-75.8603047,714m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x89c6666314c9de57:0x3af793ff8f22e15a!8m2!3d40.1565887!4d-75.8577244!16s%2Fg%2F11twqf3x54?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUwNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

412 Ridgeway Rd Birdsboro PA (Might have been the original signal headend in the 90s when 6400 Perkiomen was smaller and just a customer interface center). Dishes here are overgrown. Big antenna still here. Not sure if anything is still active (I hiked up to this remote site a few years ago and had pics on brodbandreports).
https://www.google.com/maps/place/412+Ridgeway+Rd,+Birdsboro,+PA+19508/@40.2864243,-75.8969457,713m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x89c67a838bf73ff7:0x34eabf6ef48356aa!8m2!3d40.2864202!4d-75.8943654!16s%2Fg%2F11c4wqx91v?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUwNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

175 Lake Rd Fleetwood PA (Fleetwood hub) serving the north to the Berks/Lehigh line - Includes Kutztown. (flt designation in traceroutes)
https://www.google.com/maps/place/175+Lake+Rd,+Ruscombmanor+Township,+PA+19522/@40.4460981,-75.8066961,711m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x89c5d42a2d438e93:0x7fd0b26dc4152321!8m2!3d40.446094!4d-75.8041158!16s%2Fg%2F11c4mzm9pf?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUwNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

3333 Penn Ave - West Lawn (This will be the site of a new future hub for system expansion).
https://www.google.com/maps/place/3333+Penn+Ave,+West+Lawn,+PA+19609/@40.3263188,-76.0136151,712m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x89c673c212d61af7:0xe4e205cc5452a5b6!8m2!3d40.3263148!4d-76.0087496!16s%2Fg%2F11c4shtrvs?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUwNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

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